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FDR Memorial 2nd Term 1937-1941 (Photo credit: krossbow)

After campaigning hard for his new soak-the-rich tax increases, President Obama—er, I mean President Franklin D. Roosevelt—won reelection in 1936. A solid Democratic Congress dutifully passed the tax hikes, which quickly led to what’s known as the “Roosevelt recession” of 1937. If President Obama wins his reelection bid and gets his tax increases implemented, we will get the “Obama recession” of 2013.

The last recession has been officially over for more than three years, though it certainly doesn’t seem that way to millions of struggling and unemployed Americans; and the country is perilously close to falling back into another.

While the president boasts of steady, albeit slow, economic growth:

The economy only added 96,000 jobs in August, down from 141,000 in July and a January-March average of 226,000 a month;

Applications for unemployment benefits rose from 367,000 in August to 382,000 (though economists think some of that increase was due to Hurricane Isaac);

And U.S. rail traffic, a leading economic indicator, was down 3.4 percent from the same period in 2011.

The economy is staggering under the load of Obama’s policies, making it increasingly likely we will soon slip into a double-dip recession.

The Federal Reserve Bank is so concerned that it jumped back into the economy with its third quantitative easing (QE3). Indeed, the recent housing-market uptick may be a result of the Fed’s easy-money policies—which, ironically, arguably led to the housing bubble that initiated the 2007 recession.

But the Fed’s efforts to flood the economy with money—$2.3 trillion since 2008—won’t save us from another recession, and may actually exacerbate the problem, if companies and entrepreneurs refuse to invest in new opportunities, equipment and people. That’s what happened in 1937 with Roosevelt’s reelection, and it will happen again if Obama is reelected.

There are at least three reasons why an Obama victory will almost surely lead to a recession in 2013:

(1) Obama’s version of the “Wealth Tax.” As part of his reelection ploy, FDR proposed what he dubbed a “Wealth Tax.” As he explained to Congress in June 1935, “Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few, and they have done little to prevent the unjust concentration of wealth and economic power. … Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods.” [See here.]

Similarly, Obama wants to impose a number of new taxes on those he considers wealthy—individuals making more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000. Take the dividends tax, for example, which currently sits at 15 percent. The president’s proposal will nearly triple that tax, to 43.4 percent, at a time when the Fed’s low-interest rate policy has driven investors toward dividend-paying stocks in the hope of getting some return on their money. Think a tripling of the dividend tax, and a 33 percent increase of the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 20 percent, just might have detrimental impact on investing?

(2) The certainty of uncertainty. The uncertainties created by the explosion of regulations, taxes and mandates (e.g., most employers must provide health insurance) will encourage businesses to remain hunkered down and sitting on their cash, unsure what challenges and costs they face when hiring and expanding.

But it’s not because employers are greedy or evil, which was the constant message emerging from speakers at the Democratic convention. They are doing exactly what most families do in times of uncertainty. If you know your job is shaky, or that you may see your income decline, you will likely postpone major or unnecessary purchases until the situation is clearer or more stable. Obama’s policies have created massive uncertainties among employers—and employees, for that matter—who will sit on their hands, and cash, a little longer if he is reelected.